Chapter 38
The Pellicle welcomed him like an old dream. This time, he got there almost directly, passing through the spiritual layers of existence as if they were an afterthought.
White space stretched in all directions, infinite and directionless. Black geometric shapes drifted through the emptiness, rotating on axes that didn’t correspond to any physical dimension. The silence here felt strange, as it didn’t feel like silence, yet he couldn’t hear anything.
He found her resting on the cloud, again. Same position, same sprawl, same light breathing and closed eyes. Six wings draped across the cloud behind her, white feathers catching light that had no source. Her sapphire eyes slowly opened after he arrived. “That did not take long.”
Her voice sounded as if naturally spoken, melodic but cold.
Alsen tried to speak, and realized he had no mouth. He couldn’t see his arms at all.
“Visualize yourself. Your soul will take appropriate shape.”
He focused, doing his best to imagine himself, just in much better mage robes, and imbued the idea into his form. Within a moment, he saw his arms and body. “Thanks.”
“Not half bad.” She smiled. “It does not happen often that I meet someone around these parts of existence.”
“I’m new to the idea. Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same questions.” She adjusted herself on the cloud, looking at him while bracing her head with her arm. “Call me Alsha. I come here to dream.”
“I’m Alsen… what do you mean, to dream?”
“True rest is often surprisingly out of reach. Here, not many can come bother me, so it’s the perfect place to rest. That souls do not wither in here is a pleasant bonus.”
He exhaled, realizing he breathed, even though he didn’t have lungs. The entire Pellicle seemed to be more of a conceptual space than anything real. Yet here he was, having a conversation. “Alsha, as in Alshaiel? The Goddess of Magical Arts of the Spiral religion?”
Her smile returned, playful this time. “What is a god?”
He shrugged. “I’ve never met any or interacted with any that was real.”
“Try harder.”
Right, he might as well give her the courtesy of a proper answer.
If this wasn’t the place for a philosophical discussion, then nowhere was.
“God is a concept, often assigned to what people cannot explain, which is typically one that induces a form of fear. Death being the most common, as people seek an answer to what is after death, and thus worship a god as a conceptual answer to the question.”
“Not a bad angle, but from a practical standpoint, god is a worshiped being. It matters not whether the being exists or is purely imaginary. For as long as there’s a larger number of people worshiping it, it’s a god.
In the case of me and the spiral, the spiral is the symbol I sometimes wear, and my usage of Arts tends to inspire worship.
So, by the technicality of being worshiped, I am indeed the goddess of the spiral religion. ”
That was and wasn’t an answer to his question at all. “The religion doesn’t seem to be doing terribly well.”
“Assume people of the last village you passed begin to worship you. Would you ever find out, if you don’t ever return to the village?”
No… he got her point. “And I suppose if I were to ask you why you are the displayed mentor of the archmage specialization in the system, you would give me a similar answer.”
She shrugged. “That depends on if you ask me.”
Ah, a true lover of technicalities. “Why does the system have you as the archmage specialization mentor?”
“I suppose I have made enough of an impression on it.” She smiled again. “It tends to happen when I use my art.”
Another not-really-an-answer. She knew what he was asking for. She chose to play games. “Do you know who created the system?”
“I do.”
“Who?”
“I won’t tell.” She chuckled. “Life is boring with all the answers.”
All right. Not much point in pursuing that, at least not directly. It might well have been her. “There’s a six-star phenomenon that appears in the sky of a world that is about to lose magic. I’ve seen it on two worlds now. What do you know about it?”
“Nothing.” She shrugged a bit. “Stars make all types of formations as they sail through the sky. People put meaning behind things that don’t have any.”
“That an assigned meaning is wrong doesn’t mean there is no meaning.
” He narrowed his eyes. There was no way someone who existed at the Pellicle, the literal source of magic, didn’t know anything about a phenomenon that robbed worlds of their magic.
“The stars are a warning of the incoming loss of mana. What’s causing it? ”
She released a long exhale. “That doesn’t bother me. The Pellicle has the mana I use, and I can always access it. I don’t know about any phenomena that could snuff magic out of a world.”
Hmph. He had to take her word for it, for now. “Is there a way to heal souls?”
She arched an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you are already afraid of your soul withering. You still have some path to walk until you get to that point.”
“No… what is that?”
“The end of all beings. Soul entropy. Over time, every soul reduces to nothing. It usually takes about two hundred years for humans, but it’s easy to accelerate it with magic.”
Like by transferring one’s soul to another world. He had to research that. “Is there any way to reverse it?”
Loud thumps echoed through his mind. She said something. He couldn’t hear, his ears filled with the thumping. His form broke. The Pellicle around him shattered like glass, everything swirled, and he awoke in reality.
Someone was pounding at the door.
Alsen rubbed his eyes. Everything hurt, his eyes burned, and his throat felt like sand, again. By the light behind the window, it was early morning. Damn it.
He got up, his head spinning. He stumbled to the water bucket, and poured himself a mug. As he drank, he looked over the apartment. Empty bed, no movement, no sign of Arleria.
That sprang him awake. Did something happen to her?
He tossed the half-drunk cup, rushed to the door, almost tripping, unlocked and opened.
Two men stood in the corridor, dressed in uniforms that probably marked them as city guard. These wore chainmail under blue surcoats, swords at their hips.
“You’re the mage, right?” one of them said, voice dry.
“Yeah, so?”
The guard’s expression was the kind that men wore when they’d seen something they wished they hadn’t.
Tight around the eyes, controlled at the mouth, the face of professional composure stretched thin over something raw.
“There’s been an incident at the adventurer’s guild.
We are looking for any remaining adventurers. ”
Remaining?
Fuck.
Fly.
Alsen burst from the floor and out through the window. He almost slammed into the building across the street, barely adjusting his trajectory above the roof. In a few moments, he flew over the district, the next one, and landed by the adventurer’s guild.
Four guards stood around, mostly leaning on the wall. Alsen marched straight into the guild, passing by a pile of vomit by the entrance. Readying his power, he passed through the door, and entered the main hall.
He froze in place.
In front of him spread an absolute massacre. Blood covered everything. Splattered on the walls, flooded all over the tables and floor, splashed over the bodies. So many bodies.
Torn apart, often carved open at the chest, cut into ribbons. He recognized the armor, the weapons, some of the faces.
He fired a life scan, the spell washing over the room.
No hits. Not even a hint of one.
Fuck.
The smell hit him. Blood. Rot. Death.
His stomach turned.
He stumbled out, bent over, and hurled. As he held himself by the knees, Alsen emptied his stomach, adding to the vomit pile.
After a bit of retching, he forced himself to straighten. Was Arleria in there? And what about Luna? Was she among the corpses?
He returned to the hall, his stomach still twisting, but with nothing left to expel. With his chest so tight his blood barely flowed, he looked over the bodies.
Savnoj’s face caught his attention, scar still recognizable, body crumpled on the floor, his scale mail breached, chest torn open, his shield arm severed. His three companions lay around. He recognized them all, even in the torn form.
A bunch of low-rank adventurers covered the wider ground, torn apart, one with a shattered head inside a deformed helmet. Torben’s men, most of them, most likely.
He spotted Derell. Fuck. His plate armor was slashed apart as if by massive claws, the steel torn. Malick beside him, cut in half at the waist, his chest torn apart as well.
Kern lay by the eastern wall, his bow on the floor, his axe and dagger still in his hands, both of which lay separated from his disemboweled body.
Alsen kept walking. His feet carried him through the blood, toward the back of the hall, past the overturned tables and the scattered remains of what looked like Marena’s clothes, just covered in blood, filled with a mutilated corpse.
He found Theron first. The big man lay face-down, the wall cracked behind him, his massive battleaxe on the floor next to him. His body looked deformed, most likely as he smashed against the wall with so much force it demolished his bones.
Alsen’s breath stopped.
Near Theron lay Arleria.
He recognized her robe, even with all the blood. Her hair fanned across the stone floor, her eyes open and staring at nothing.
Her chest was open. Like the others.
Alsen stood over her. His legs didn’t buckle. His hands didn’t shake. His vision blurred, eyes watered with tears. He stood there, perfectly still, and felt something inside himself crack along a fault line he hadn’t known existed.
The scan confirmed what his eyes already told him. No heartbeat. No breath. No mana signature. The healing matrix she’d been building in his arm, the one she’d tended to every day with her pink light and her sharp words and her steady hands, was all that remained of her magic.
He crouched beside her. Reached out with his right hand, and closed her eyes.